It is a fundamental principle of international criminal law and international human rights law that civilians may not be subjects of intentional violent acts aiming to kill, seriously injure, terrorize, and torture including in the context of attempts at achieving national self-determination.

We live, by and large, in the aggregate, in a permanent state of empathy deficit. If empathy were a more common value there would be less violence and discrimination in the world, both structurally in collective ways and interpersonally, individually.

Anything that forces people to think twice before resorting to the laziest, least free form of 'free' speech that is the default knee-jerk Nazi comparison has to be a positive innovation. A properly-legislated version of Godwin's Law would only give more power to humanity's exercise of freedom of expression.

What would life be like in a prison camp? We can postulate about dirty, cramped conditions but few of us will ever experience anything remotely resembling such an ordeal. It is even hard to imagine. The only given is that we would live in hope of being liberated from our nightmare. We would expect to be rescued as quickly as humanly possible.

The image is forever embedded in the Israeli psyche. The smouldering carcass of a passenger bus. Charred metal, burning glass, the faded colours of once happy branding, now turned pale, flecked with brown and black.